Appendix Not So Useless After All?

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Appendix Not So Useless After All?

Pity the poor appendix. For many people it's certainly more trouble than it's worth, even if it does play an immune-system role in the early years of life.

But now a Duke professor who studies colonies of microbes in the body argues that the little three-inch pouch has a different function in keeping us healthy, as a repository of helpful bacteria that might otherwise get flushed out by explosive bowel sicknesses.

William Parker, an assistant professor of experimental surgery at Duke University Medical Center has been studying layers of beneficial bacteria and other microbes that line the intestinal wall, called biofilms. These little white-hat beasties have jobs such as helping the gut break down food.

These layers turn out to be particularly prevalent in the appendix and the surrounding area, where immune system tissue also lies. Parker says he believes this tissue is meant to protect the good microbes in the appendix, which can serve as a kind of last stand in some kinds of sickness.

Diseases that cause severe diarrhea can wind up flushing most of the good microbes and the biofilms from the intestinal tract, Parker says.The appendix can then serve as a corporeal Fort Knox, storing backups of these necessary bacterias that can then repopulate the body when the illness is over.

This idea might certainly put a new light on the underappreciated appendix, particularly in parts of the world where cholera and other stomach-dissolving illnesses remain a possibility. So: say vestigial no longer. Say forward-looking instead.